Make sure reviews are reviews again (minimum of 50 words instead of 50 characters)

Thanks for your feedback, Grayson. That's a good point of course, but many of us don't see the benefit of a great abundance of reviews constructed in such short abrupt sentences. So, maybe the minimum quantity of words in a review should be twenty? Or maybe, there should be a system in place that allows people to post one-sentence reviews in the first place but that the one-sentence reviews will eventually be removed once the movie being reviewed is no longer fresh or hot?

Grayson, I really appreciate you taking the time to give your opinion on this matter. That said, I fail to see the logic behind it.

I will offer the counterpoint that putting a minimum character limit on reviews will mean less people submit reviews.

Can you explain why that would be a problem? To give an example, the movie you reference, Captain America: Civil War, currently has 1,438 reviews. (Apart from that, I think we can all agree that the quality of well-thought out, well-written reviews will increase with a higher minimum character limit.)

A short review can still tell you something, for example: "If you liked Captain America: Civil War you'll love this!"

I fail to see what this tells you. How does this review tell you that you should see this film? You don't know why the reviewer feels you'll love this film if you liked Captain America: Civil War (something other reviews probably WILL tell you, by the way). Perhaps it's simply because the same actress is in it (perhaps even the one in Civil War you like the least) or it also has a superhero in it (which might not be the main reason you like Civil War so much).

What I find irritating about the abundance of very short reviews (all from 2020) is that they are going out of their way to call out those who had a completely different view of the particular title in question. You are here to write about your feelings on a particular film or TV show/episode, not bash other users. I'd rather read reviews with particularly non-politically correct terms than someone telling other viewers that their review of a rather obscure film made them mad because they didn't agree with it, one reason I dislike the thumbs up or thumbs down for "helpful".

I recently came across one of my old reviews which I did have to re-edit, embarrassed by the number of typo's, which most likely did result in some thumbs down, but that's a different situation. I will most likely thumb someone down for bashing the overall rating of a film or other writers who felt differently on a title, but that is the only time I use that function. Some people take their opinions way too seriously while I'm sure that most writers, like myself, only want to have a written record of their viewing while helping keep certain obscure titles alive when others happen to discover them. 

@reviewsguro 

Joined on Sep 2, 2021

Users are still posting Short Reviews
  
IMDb has More than 7,295,300 reviews ?
(looking at the RW Numbers)

https://www.imdb.com/review/rw7250000/

kavyamehta-58328
IMDb member since August 2021
https://www.imdb.com/user/ur135747015/

Review Bellbottom (2021)
10/10
Wonderful
20 August 2021
I love akshay kumar my fev actors is akki I am so excited fir this film.
- - -

https://www.imdb.com/review/rw7295300/

elliotpower2000
IMDb member since January 2015
https://www.imdb.com/user/ur57739284/

https://www.imdb.com/user/ur57739284/reviews - 65 Short Reviews
Review of Old School
Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Old School (2013)
Season 1, Episode 8
 6/10
Weakest episode so far
1 September 2021
Warning: Spoilers
Probably the weakest episode so far even though it is still very funny.

- - -

https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0000001/

Brian-59
https://www.imdb.com/user/ur0093335/

Review of Carmencita (1894)
one-shot record of a belly dancer
12 August 1998

"Carmencita Dancing," 
one of a series of Edison short films featuring circus and vaudeville acts,
displayed the... um... "talents" of a zaftig belly-dancer
who agreed to undulate before the camera of the famous "Black Maria" studio ....

.

@ACT_1​ Thanks a bunch for pointing this out. A good change this is.

I suppose, but I'm not sure the requirement change really had the effect everyone seemed to be assuming it would.

What about bevo-13678, the review account you described as "This is most definitely without a doubt one of the worst things I've ever seen on IMDb! Disgusting."

Has the increased character requirement put a stop to their shenanigans? (Spoiler alert: It has not.)

A sampling of two recent "reviews", in the approximate style of ACT_1:

bevo-13678
May 2017
https://www.imdb.com/user/ur76062573/
https://www.imdb.com/user/ur76062573/reviews - 3,613

Denzel

@FeRDNYC​ I agree this person should ideally not be writing reviews at all. Hopefully, a staffer will look into this. That being said, one person misbehaving on the new character requirement obviously doesn't mean this change didn't have any effect.

There probably aren't as many fluff reviewing being submitted per week this far as there eventually will be. A bigger problem just over the horizon is that of LLM being used to construct the content posted by folks too lazy to try manually assembling words and sentences to describe how they felt about a movie. But of course, some will see it as more of a solution than a problem.